I got a call from my mom, asking for me to stop in and visit dad. I’ve noticed that he’s been shrinking in stature but now I’ve been told, he’s been losing weight. I blame this on mom’s own desire to slim down. While not morbidly obese nor drastically over her ideal weight, she has this unrelenting obsession to lose weight. Oblivious to the fact that men and women differ in the way they metabolize food, she insists on this diet-as-lifestyle regimen going so far as to seek out organic foods; this coming from a woman who handled DDT on her family’s plantation as a little girl.

Strangely enough, despite growing up in hard times in the boondocks, mom is consciously chooses to not partake in the abundance of the first world; rather gleaning off of its surplus. Discounted meats from shops or stalls that can’t shift them, odd lots of produce that would otherwise be thrown into compost heaps, scraps from the fishmonger dismissed by customers who only want clean fillets or headless/tail-less “whole” fish – all are perfectly serviceable foodstuffs.

This abject parsimoniousness can be quite brutal, and I assure you Snuffy can attest to those habits that I’ve picked up, but it’s all good food. The problem is, that my mother takes it to such an extreme, that poor dad is wasting away. I worry that dad sees this weight loss as welcomed and encouraged.

I guess I have to go over to their house with a case of San Miguel and a crate of balut to put an end to all of this.

I was driving into work today and noticed that I was approaching a sleek sport coup with a Human Rights Council [link http://hrc.org] sticker on the back bumper. I thought “Hmm, there may be a good looking man in that car… oh, but just my luck it’s a lesbian or transgender person”. I decided to press my luck in the fast lane to get a better look.

I pull up beside him and take a peek. He is a plain looking man, no horrible disfigurement but no striking features either. Never looking in my direction but sensing that my intent is to pass him or slow down his route he darts into the slower moving lanes.

Passing cars, weaving through traffic dangerously, this man turned out to be a real jackass on the road. I wonder if he placed that HRC sticker on his bumper to ease the trauma of the people he cuts off on the road “Yeah I cut you off, you were going slow, and oh I like the GLBT community.”

I like to think that this man doesn’t realize the sticker is on his bumper. His friends appreciate irony on my level and placed the sticker on his car, knowing that it would instantly attract apparently slow moving gays to his car to catch a glimpse of who is in the drivers seat. Even better, I imagine this man hopes to anger a hot blooded burly man. Who will follow him to his destination, shout at him for his rude driving, then share a wild tryst in a small office bathroom.

I saw on a sunday morning news program about the declining sales of news magazines and newspapers. Citing media experts and rising paper costs, the primary reason for the drop in sales/readership is the instant gratification of the internet. I can’t help but feel personally responsible.

True, I don’t look to the newspaper for the latest news or classified ads but that doesn’t mean that I’d never pick up a newspaper. The problem is, the paper has gone flat in all senses of the word. I abandoned the Detroit newspapers after the long nineteen month long strike over ten years ago. Writers left, ads dropped out, and a new layout shrunk the paper down. After the smoke cleared, the paper lost its oomf and I turned onto the Gray Lady.

The New York Times was a wonderful newspaper. As an idealistic college student, I had time to read the paper daily. I loved fluff pieces and not necessarily news, but the interpretation of news. As I moved into adulthood, I found that I only had time and money (no more student discounts) for the Sunday paper. A weekly summary, color fashion pictures in the style section, and a magazine that delved deep into issues that I didn’t think I was interested about.

Now, I am paperless. I can no longer pay the non-teaser rates for the LA or NY Times, I can’t get behind the bipartisan Sunday Detroit newspaper, and all other papers just don’t tickle me. I feel no romance for the newspaper anymore, but I wish I had that spark. I’ll miss the rustle, the smell, the ink stained fingers and I doubt that e-paper will afford me that sensation. Lo, I will buy the paper from time to time and I will skim it. It is all that I can do to ease the guilt as it was never meant to be read, but to be used as kindling.